The Mother -- not finished

It's almost funny the way they forgot me, my children. They call themselves Lords, take control of all the secrets I taught them, act like the masters of Time and Space. The one place they never visit is their own past. It wasn't terribly hard to engineer, though.1

They were my secrets. Their freemasonry followed, oh so many generations later, and flourished into something larger than the sum of its parts. How apt. That's what we do, after all, that's what I taught them: to manipulate space and relative size.2

I wish I had managed to perfect regeneration in time. This is not a pleasant way to experience immortality...3

* * *4

"Doctor, where are we?" Jill screeched over the roar of the engines and the persistent alarm.5

He ignored her, engaged in energetically pulling levers and flipping switches, dancing urgently over obstacles.6

All went silent.7

He stood, hands in pockets, gazing at one of the screens. Jill followed his gaze. The screen was blank. "Where are we?" she repeated, more quietly.8

"We're nowhere. Nowhere at all." He looked at her, and grinned like a child. "But I tell you what, there's a time source over there. And it's backwards."9

The Doctor watched the screen a little longer. "Let's investigate, shall we?" Without waiting for an answer he pulled a lever and Jill felt the brief pull of acceleration. She caught at the console. Yes, she told herself, I could say I was afraid to and he might even stop... But then I'd have to go home. And I can't give this up. It'd let the others down.10

One of the monitors showed the region of space that the TARDIS was heading for. It was, to the naked eye as well as to the monitor, entirely empty. No stars, no planets, no nothing. 11

"How do you know it's a time source?" Jill asked, curiously.12

"Can't you feel it?" The Doctor answered, glancing up only briefly. No, she couldn't feel it, of course she couldn't. Humans have a very basic time sense, after all. Anyway, she'd never heard of a time source before. It seemed almost nonsensical, like finding a source of space... or, she considered wryly, like finding a space that was bigger on the inside than the outside.13

That was the fascination of the Doctor. He knew so much, and perhaps she could catch on to just a little of it.14

"No, of course not. I don't even know what a time source is. How can you have a source of time? It's time!"15

"Oh, you can have a source of anything -- energy, matter, space, time. Spacetime too. If you have the right conditions. How do you think all this got here?" He gestured wildly with one arm, still bent over the instruments.16

Jill shrugged. "I'm a subscriber to the Big Bang theory, I suppose. That it all started at the beginning of the universe."17

He straightened up and looked at her. "Well. Nearly. Sort of. But it doesn't all have to start at once. It can, kind of, well, change as it goes. Evolve. Extra dimensions, quantum tunnelling, wormholes through space and time. That sort of thing. Stuff leaks in and out all the time." He bent back down over the console. "The problem with the Big Bang theory is it assumes that everything new happened at the start."18

Curious, she moved quietly round to his side of the console. What was he looking at over there? She'd examined every instrument at one time or another, but they didn't show her anything. No dials, no LEDs. No helpful manual labelled "TARDIS controls for dummies". At the moment, he had one hand hovering over a bank of eight switches, flipping them apparently randomly. The other hand was alternating between turning a small wheel and pulling on a lever. It was all very mysterious. She sighed, quietly. Perhaps she'd never understand it from first principles. Maybe she could convince him to teach her?19

"Right. Hold on." 20

She grabbed the nearest fixture as the TARDIS abruptly slowed, pulling her forwards.21

"And we're here!" As the force relaxed he sprang energetically to his feet and headed out to the door. He pulled the door open and disappeared through it. Jill followed rather more slowly.22

* * *23

Ah, yes, the TARDIS. A clumsy acronym and a clumsy shape, a spinning box. But such a delicate piece of machinery, carefully surfing the universal time currents without changing them. A mechanism that is as much a part of space time as it is a method for manipulating it. And this is the only one existing in this set of dimensions.24

I can remember when it was all other. Before the time war. Before the time lords, my children, were pulled away from my unseen resting place and into the dimensions where the Nothings exist.